The most comprehensive studies of the effigy specifically are Bauch 1976 and Körner 1997. This partly reflects the rise in production of such monuments in this period but is also linked to a long historiographic emphasis on the full-figure effigy, a format that first emerged in the north and has long been linked to personal piety and individual salvation. Most surveys of medieval tomb sculpture gravitate toward the period c. 1100–1500 and center attention on French, German and, to a lesser extent, English monuments. Though these broad trends are shared across the field, the idiosyncratic nature of the material and the apparently bespoke nature of most monuments has led to a field defined by case studies, with relatively few attempts to synthesize pictures of the greater whole that move beyond highly localized geographic limits. This discourse has largely centered on two entwined themes: first, the use of tomb sculpture to promote and ensure salvation for the dead, and, second, its role in shaping the ideals and ambitions of the living. While much of the formative scholarship on medieval tomb sculpture had been primarily driven either by biographical interests in the individuals they commemorated or by a teleological interest in tracing the stylistic evolution of forms from late medieval reliefs to free-standing Renaissance statues, more recent studies have turned to the political, theological, and social meanings of these powerful monuments. Thus, the emphasis placed in this article on the effigy and the period 1100–1500 reflects not only scholarly interest but also the patterns of production that can be observed elsewhere in the chronology of medieval European architecture and sculpture. This tradition seems to have faded with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West and the rise of new kingdoms across Europe, many of which produced little monumental sculpture (or at least, little that survives) before the 12th century. Elaborate tombs with decorative programs were comparatively scarce in the earlier Middle Ages, with the important exception of the richly carved sarcophagi found in the Roman Empire during the 4th and 5th centuries, which appropriated a popular late antique format and replaced its Bacchic image cycles with new Christian iconographies. The first known examples of the effigy date to the years around 1100 and seem to emerge in Germany the format was quickly adopted in France, England, and elsewhere before becoming a dominant fixture of Gothic churches across Europe in the 13th through 15th centuries. The most ubiquitous format in much of Europe was the effigy, which usually appeared as a recumbent figure set on a slab that also sometimes functioned as the lid of a tomb chest. Among the many genres of medieval sculpture that are still extant, tombs have long received particularly close attention because of their direct association with the bodies of specific historical individuals, which are very often (though not exclusively) those of the most prestigious members of medieval society.
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